2026 Oxford AI and Media Policy Summer Institute

The 2026 Oxford AI and Media Policy Summer Institute takes place at a moment when the legal and institutional foundations of digital governance are being tested, whether through emergency measures, shifting security claims, or the rising strategic value of information infrastructures. Longstanding assumptions about the international system are under strain.  Rules are being rewritten across technology, trade, security, and infrastructure, even as the shape of any order that will replace the current one remains uncertain. This year’s theme centres on sovereignty and multilateral cooperation in AI and media policy, and the socio-legal questions that arise when authority is increasingly exercised – and contested – through digital systems.

Across two intensive weeks of the Summer Institute, we will examine how power and legitimacy are asserted and challenged, whether through platform governance, content regulation, or AI supply chains. We will explore cases where these dynamics have become especially visible ranging from the legitimacy of internet shutdowns during elections in Uganda or protests and network disruptions in Iran to the emerging politics of sovereign AI, including contestation over cloud dependence, standards, and cross-border data architectures reflected in the political concerns in Ethiopia, France or India.We will also explore how regulatory agendas are negotiated amid infrastructural constraints, with questions of development and widening inequality at the fore, as in Brazil and South Africa.

Drawing on Oxford’s interdisciplinary strengths, the Institute brings together speakers from across academia alongside leaders from policy, government, civil society, and the private sector. We will use our vantage point from the UK and Europe to consider regional priorities—such as the implementation and international impacts of the EU digital regulations and national approaches to online harms. 

As with Institutes in the past, our approach remains decisively global, with focused attention on the perspectives and agendas of the Global South, including the ways middle and smaller powers are increasingly pushing back, navigating, bargaining, and operating across institutions in a contested landscape. We will focus on how global south countries are developing emerging modes of resistance to powerful actors, including BigTech, and are attempting to re-write rules in an effort to promote greater equality and inclusivity.

For more than twenty-five years, the Institute has supported a global community of alumni spanning academia, policy, civil society, and industry. Central to our approach is the active engagement of participants.  The programme is designed around group discussions and opportunities to draw, and reflect, on participants' professional experience and research agendas. It offers a unique opportunity to pause, gain distance from day-to-day routines, and engage with new and diverse perspectives from around the world. In a moment of flux and uncertainty, join us to debate urgent questions in global AI and media policy – both in the seminar room and in the conversations that unfold over breakfast, shared meals, and alongside the rich exciting cultural life Oxford offers.

Please get in touch with us if you have any questions at pcmlp@csls.ox.ac.uk 

Applications will open soon.